


Intrapersonal

by rinkirunkku



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: (kinda?), Angst with a Happy Ending, Bipolar Disorder, M/M, References to self-harm, Substance Abuse, Touch-Starved, references to disordered eating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 06:04:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11961252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinkirunkku/pseuds/rinkirunkku
Summary: "He feels the hid away energy surfacing and the knot of anxiety easing in his stomach, and he knows the fleeting thoughts from before, just knows that this trip will be the end of the depressive episode he’s been having, that the only way from here is up, up,up."





	Intrapersonal

He has it all together most of the time, really.

Those times his rent is paid in time, none of the library books ever run late, nor are his flowers ever close to dying of thirst. He keeps in contact with his parents, writes letters to a niece in a foreign country under a foreign rule, and makes shopping trips for his elderly neighbor from three doors down. Most of the time he truly has it together for long periods of time.

But sometimes, just sometimes, the same walls get unbearable, the lighting in the bathroom makes him anxious, the clock on the wall that has run out of batteries months ago feels like it’s judging him. Suddenly the feet he usually trusts are moving on their own or not at all, appetite for eating tends to disappear for days. Those days he lays on his bed with legs hanging over the edge until his toes go numb due to coldness and bad circulation, and the cuticles on his fingers bleed for hours and hours, begging not to be torn apart again. Bad thoughts harbor his mind from the moment he wakes up from a six-hour-long depression nap until he falls asleep again just before the sun comes back from behind the horizon. Those are the bad times he rarely gets out of bed, not bothering with basic hygiene or checking the mail. “ _But it’s alright_ ,” he tells himself. “ _It’s going to be over in a few days, a week at most, and then everything’s back to normal._ ”

The mantra gets old after a while. It loses its meaning after the repeats, after being proven useless one too many times. It’s what people tell him when he tells them he’s feeling the way he is, so it feels like someone else’s words. They’re not his thoughts, they’re someone else’s who doesn’t know what else to tell him, who’s only ever read a text book about being different, who’s only in his life because of a degree of some sorts from a university he’s never heard of. Understanding this makes him feel even worse, because the only person in his life who he talks to about the thoughts that plague him in the dead of night has been paid to listen to him.

Loneliness is the worst part of it. When he’s active, either normally so or manically so, the thoughts bouncing in his mind rarely give space for a jarring need for physical touching. The last time he touched anyone was back before he fell ill -- or worse than usual --, when he fleetingly helped a shop clerk to collect fallen money from a counter. Anything before that is hazy, really. He wishes that someone were there for him.

Inspired by the thought he gets up from the kitchen floor. Coffee’s gone cold since he’d forgotten he ever brew it, and there’s a carton of low-fat milk on the counter that’s going to go bad any day now, but he ignores both. An old pair of skinny jeans is found underneath the coffee table in the living room, a clashing pair of socks is retrieved from beneath the shoe rack. The time's flying, it’s too late to shower, so instead he sprays whatever he first finds on his hair and masks it all with a cologne he got as a present so many years ago, and in a flash, he’s ready to leave.

The shoelaces are knotted in a dimly lit elevator on his way down, and he makes sure to simmer down the oily surface of his face with a powder hidden in his breast pocket. He looks like a wreck, he feels like a wreck, he _is_ a literal wreck, but in the shadows cast by streetlights he passes as a functional human being. He feels the hid away energy surfacing and the knot of anxiety easing in his stomach, and he knows the fleeting thoughts from before, just knows that this trip will be the end of the depressive episode he’s been having, that the only way from here is up, up, _up_.

The sound of a low bass line of a boring pop song can be heard from behind a corner, and then he’s there. His body is already getting intoxicated by the mere thought of tonight, that he’s up and about and ready to take over the world, that he’s about to meet someone tonight and about to be touched by them, that the loneliness no longer exists and that the numbness is going to be washed away by alcohol. A guy outside talking to a bouncer gives him a half-smoked cigaret, already lit, and Prompto’s sure he’s seen the guy before, but his memory is hazy around the times he usually visits the club.

The bouncer knows him, doesn’t even check his ID to let him inside, and though Prompto knows he’s become a mysterious regular who visits three times a week and then disappears for months, he can’t help but feel like every time he comes there it’s the first time ever. Faces around him are like from a dream seen a lifetime ago, sloppy and darkened around the edges but still there for him to recall.

He orders a drink, asks the bartender to surprise him, and is served a colourful glass with a glow stick to stir it with. It tastes ashy despite the promise of fruits in the name, but he smiles and winks at the bartender as he pays for it. A fleeting thought of “ _she knows I like sweet drinks_ ” crosses his mind but is soon put aside by “ _who cares_ ”, he’s here to grind against needy bypassers, to find a soulmate for tonight, and to forget that he’s ever in his life being miserable and alone.

Time flies. He can recall eating pills of varying colours, red and blue and red again, can remember the dealer addressing him by his name he never told her, but he’s not sure if the drugs are kicking in or if he’s been fed with placebo drugs and he’s just giddy because of the imbalances in his brain. The gum in his mouth wasn’t there before he made out with the bald girl by the entrance, and his empty wallet is gone from his back pocket, but he doesn’t care since soon the gum is flushed down the toilet with fruity-coloured puke and spit.

The morning after his throat feels stiff and wronged, the little shut-eye he had was slept with his contacts on and he wishes he could sleep more, but there’s a jittery feeling of energy at the bottom of his belly and he’s awake within seconds from opening his eyes. Restlessly pacing through his apartment he tries to lose himself to little things like tidying up and doing the dishes, watering the plants and cleaning the toilet, but soon he catches himself from brushing his teeth for the third time that morning and nervously picking his skin ‘till it’s bleeding. So instead of confiscating himself inside the apartment, he goes for a run and runs and runs and runs, because nothing feels like anything and he’s not hungry nor thirsty and he just runs because _fuck_ does he feel amazing.

He knows he should be taking his pills -- the doctor told him, but fuck the doctor --, knows he shouldn’t give in to impulses and intrusive thoughts, but by the time he’s about to shower to leave for a bar again there are cuts on his upper arms he doesn’t remember making and a swollen bite mark over his knuckle. They don’t phase him, though, because he looks fantastic and sexy and ready to conquer the bar again tonight, so he just wraps the arm with a bandana and leaves the door without second thoughts.

The club’s fuller this time, with a queue leading up to the entrance. He bums a cigaret off a pretty girl, surely too young to be in a place like this, makes small talk with her and her friend and gets the teens in because he’s a regular and they’re not. Soon after he’s on his own again, with adrenaline thrumming in his veins and his mouth thirsty for a shot or two or three.

He’s halfway through the first drink when a bartender brings him another one, tells him it’s from a guy with a cute smile. Prompto’s not sure if it’s a she or a he, but the kid’s cute, so he smiles back and joins the table to thank for the drink.

They talk for what feels like hours, and Prompto’s mesmerized by the guy’s eyes, the little chin lift he does when he smiles, a lone mole above his eyebrow and another below his lips. He has to excuse himself because “ _you’re gorgeous, can I kiss you?_ ” feels like too much too soon, but the guy is nodding, he’s smiling, they’re both smiling, and soon the smiles mend together and it’s so good that Prompto can actually taste the boy on his lips instead of the ashy aftertaste that everything else leaves on his tongue.

There’s a caress on the boy’s thigh when they leave to order more drinks, a fleeting touch on the back of Prompto’s back when they stand close to each other, and though he didn’t know it before, Prompto’s been dying for touches like these. There’s something else on the bottom of his stomach than a jittery bundle of nerves, and it feels good, feels like back when he first kissed his crush in sixth grade, and it’s not an illusion made by his mental state or the drugs they keep pumping into him, but instead the boy he’s sharing a laugh with under the dim lit lights in the corner of a club. Though he doesn’t know it for sure, he hopes the sentiment is shared because he hopes he’s not the only one living a dream at 2 am in a bar with a complete stranger he feels like he’s known his whole life.

The temperature of the room and the closeness of everyone dancing around him set in and Prompto feels like he’s suffocating, so they run out with their drinks even though it’s against the rules. Behind a corner, the boy bottoms up the rest of the liquor and smashes the glass to the ground, and together they laugh and laugh and laugh because they’re feeling young and alive. Prompto has to lean against a tile wall to keep himself upright but the boy follows him and soon they’re laughing against each others’ skins and gasping for breath between shared touches of both fingers and lips. The boy keeps him close and holds him like the greatest treasure of his life, and Prompto feels treasured, so he sheds a tear just to dry it on the boy’s dark jacket and continues laughing because he’s _alive_.

They walk the streets of Insomnia, hand in hand, in each others’ shadows and personal spaces, the boy tells him stories of junk food places he’s worked at, a corner store he once stole cigarettes from, a cemetery his aunt is buried in. Prompto listens because he’s good at it, but also because he’s got no stories of his own. There’s nothing that distincts Prompto of every other ordinary human being of the city, only that he’s a mess in the head and below a healthy weight limit and too tired to off himself. But the boy doesn’t care, he’s there to tell stories like no one’s ever listened to him before, and Prompto’s glad to do that for him as an exchange for how precious he’s made Prompto feel tonight.

Soon the middle-class district changes into a wealthy one and Prompto has no idea where the boy is leading him, but he follows because he couldn’t care less about the consequences. The boy takes him to his home that’s on the top floor of some fancy looking building, and they’re still laughing because he presses the wrong button in the elevator and Prompto runs the stairs up to the actual floor, and they’re there in the boy’s cleanly furnished apartment and kissing and holding each other as the morning sun peeks through the curtains.

Prompto sits on the floor for the boy to take off his shoes, he smiles at the boy’s chuckle when he sees Prompto’s socks that don’t match, the chocobo pattern of the left one and one that says “Thursday” even though it’s already Sunday. They sit in the hall with Prompto’s hands around the boy, sharing little kisses and caring touches but never going further, because the boy is sleepy and coming down from his drunken state, and Prompto doesn’t want to move because he’s feeling loved and cared for. The boy tells him he doesn’t want to have sex, he doesn’t enjoy the act, and though Prompto can’t relate, he understands.

“I just want to wake up with someone next to me,” the boy whispers and laces his fingers through Prompto’s hair, and Prompto gets it, really does.

They fall asleep in each other’s arms after moving to the bedroom, still laying on top of the covers with all their clothes on. Just before the sleep catches onto him he whispers a faint “ _thank you_ ” to the boy’s hair and presses a kiss among the dark strands because he’s sure that in the morning he’ll feel better than he’s felt in months.

**Author's Note:**

> this had a working title of “manic! at the disco” but it seemed inappropriate so :^)
> 
> after writing this i remembered that turnover's song "intrapersonal" has kind of fitting lyrics so ! that's where the title is from


End file.
